First up was a container loaded with equipment for a secluded property being renovated on the edge of the forest. There used to be a riding school and a cafe, but it had been reconfigured for a mysterious business.
Then a bunch of muscular young men appeared, jogging through the trees at odd hours and talking to each other in English.
Nearly 20 years ago, while observing the comings and goings of the small hamlet of Antabilai in Lithuania, Juosas Banevisius thought it was a little strange that newcomers would chase away anyone who approached the security fence he had erected around the property. I remembered that. , previously open to the public.
“No one knew what they were doing inside,” recalls Banevicius, 66.
Since then, that answer has been under intense scrutiny by the press and the judiciary. It all points to the same conclusion. The village of Antabilai was the site of a secret CIA detention and torture center, one of three so-called black sites the agency set up in Eastern Europe after the September 11, 2001 attacks.
In January, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that a secret prison codenamed Site Violet was located in Lithuania “beyond reasonable doubt.” The unnamed village of Antaviliai, near the capital Vilnius, is the only place in the country where Lithuanian authorities acknowledge a former CIA facility – although they insist it is not a prison. ing.
Site Violet was the subject of a 2014 Senate Intelligence Committee report following an investigation into the CIA's use of waterboarding and other “enhanced interrogation techniques.” The site operated from February 2005 to October 2006, but was shut down due to unspecified “medical issues,” according to the report.
A court ruling in January concluded that Lithuania had violated the European Convention on Human Rights “by virtue of its complicity in the CIA's secret detention program.”
Poland initially denied hosting the top-secret American prison known as Site Blue, but after a Senate investigation admitted the CIA was holding terrorist suspects on its territory. Poland's president at the time, Alexander Kwasiński, claimed he had no knowledge of the harsh methods used by American interrogators.
By contrast, multiple trials and investigations have only strengthened the carapace of official secrecy in Lithuania and the demonstration of loyalty to the United States by the fragile Baltic states, which fear an increasingly aggressive Russia.
Kestutis Gilnius, a historian at Vilnius University, said Lithuania's complicity in CIA torture is well-documented, adding: “It's not something anyone here wants to talk about. They initially raised the issue The whole thing was covered up and continued to be covered up.”
A major reason for this, he said, is that his country, a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and sandwiched between Belarus and the highly militarized Russian enclave of Kaliningrad, relies on the United States for security. Ta. But he asked: When America says jump, we just ask, “How high would you jump?” ”
Egidijus Klis, a Lithuanian judge at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France, is also outraged. “The evidence that there was a prison is clear. The evidence that there were people there is clear. “We cannot pretend it never happened” here, he said after the verdict against his country in 2018. “And yet we still ask, 'Do you think there was a prison?'”
Part of the explanation for this is that the country's parliament found that some of the millions of dollars provided by the CIA to fund secret prisons in Lithuania were not properly accounted for. He suggested that it probably meant that no one in power wanted to dig into what happened. . “Whoever pocketed that money in Lithuania must be identified,” Chris said.
In 2009, after ABC News identified Antabilai as a former CIA black site, the Lithuanian parliament established an investigative committee. It concluded that the country's Department of State Security (VSD) received funds for unspecified “concerted actions” and that its accounting was “inappropriate.”
VSD denied this, saying it “strictly accounts” all funds and “no millions of dollars went anywhere.”
A parliamentary inquiry did not reach a conclusion as to whether secret prisons existed. Flight data and other circumstantial evidence indicate that the detainees may have been secretly brought to Lithuania, but it turned out to be impossible to determine whether that actually happened.
The closest Lithuania came to admitting that the CIA was running detention centers on its territory was in 2009, when President Dalia Grybauskaite, who took office three years after the US military withdrew, spoke of secret prisons as “indirectly He said he had “some suspicions.”
If these allegations are true, “Lithuania must cleanse itself, take responsibility and apologize,” she said. It's also time for the U.S. to “give answers,” she added.
Her comments disappointed the U.S. Embassy in Lithuania, which has successfully worked for years to keep the issue out of the public eye. In a cable later posted online by WikiLeaks, the president wrote that he “reflected a lack of political seasoning and inexplicably breathed new life into a baseless story.”
“Rather than quieting unfavorable reports in Lithuania, her comments suggest that there may be some truth to the allegations,” the station said.
Officials have remained silent since then. Talking about Site Violet would raise questions about missing funds and give Russia propaganda fodder. Russia delights in pointing out the sins of Americans while flaunting its use of torture, as it did last month when it released video footage showing the brutal treatment of Americans. Suspects arrested in connection with a terrorist attack near Moscow last month.
In a January ruling, the European Court of Justice in Strasbourg ordered Lithuania to pay 100,000 euros (about $108,000) to Saudi nationals who judges determined were detained in the Baltic country. Lithuania's Ministry of Justice said last week that it was obliged to comply with the order “regardless of whether we agree with the court's reasoning or not.”
In March, the European Court of Justice notified Lithuania that it had accepted a third case related to Cyto Violet. This was brought by suspected Qaeda terrorist Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, who is currently being held at the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay and has been held by the CIA in Lithuania for five months. He claims that he was tortured. He has won previous cases against Poland and Romania regarding illegal detention.
The Ministry of Justice plans to contest the new allegations and argue, as it had previously unsuccessfully, that “all evidence regarding the applicant's detention in Lithuania is indirect and the standard of proof should be different” He said that.
Lithuania's Site Violet, wary of attracting attention, ordered CIA detainee Mustafa al-Hasawi to be admitted to hospital in need of emergency medical treatment, according to a Senate report. It was closed at the end of 2006 because of the refusal.
After the CIA left, the property, which had no neighbors other than Mr. Banevicius and residents of a nearby nursing home who could snoop, was seized by Lithuanian security services for a time and handed over to the State Property Office. The agency announced in 2022 that it plans to auction off the property – a long two-story office and living area with a large barn at the back.
It sits on what has become valuable real estate. Once a vacant lot across a dirt road from the site, it is now dotted with homes recently built by wealthy Lithuanians seeking country air and the tranquility of the forest.
However, the Real Estate Agency decided last year that instead of selling the site for redevelopment, it would hand it over to a Lithuanian prison for use as a training center.
Windows had been added to the barn, and former detainees cited in the European Court of Justice judgment said prisoners were shackled in the dark and subjected to sleep deprivation, beatings and waterboarding.
A barrage of complaints from Poland and other host countries forced the CIA to close all but two of its eight Black-American facilities overseas by 2006, according to a Senate report – Site Violet It is said to be the second prison in an unnamed country. Edited location. The total number of prisoners at the time was said to be 28.
Mr. Banevicius, a neighbor, worked for the power company at the time and had seen how much water was being consumed at the former equestrian center, but said he had never seen or heard any evidence of prisoner abuse. But he always suspected there were more people inside the building than the joggers and the few people he saw coming in.
“For very few people, they used a lot of water,” he recalled.
thomas dapkus I contributed a report from Vilnius, Lithuania.